Extra, Extra! Get Your Trench Journal!

The military drew from all walks of life, including journalists, poets and cartoonists. It wasn’t long before this brain trust produced various news sheets and magazines right from the trenches. Some were even crafted aboard the troop ships. They were created by soldiers for soldiers and often featured satirical prose, poetry, complaints, regimental sporting news, honour rolls, military decorations and jokes along the lines of “Don’t put your rum issue in your tea. You might spill the tea.” Or “First soldier: Do you think we’re winning the war? Second soldier: I don’t know. I haven’t seen the paper today.” Most of these sheets disintegrated in the muddy trenches, but some were sent home and collections are now housed in the Canadian War Museum.

Here are some of our favourite trench journal titles, where dark humour and irony are on full display:

The Brazier at the Front—16th Battalion Canadian Scottish (includes the Seaforth Highlanders from Vancouver)

The Canadian Machine Gunner—Canadian Machine Gun Corps

The Dead Horse Corner Gazette: A Monthly Journal of Breezy Comment—4th Battalion

In and Out—Canadian Field Ambulance

The Message from Mars—4th Canadian Division

The Western Scot—Victoria’s Western Scots 67th Battalion

The Whizz Bang—207th Battalion

The Shell Hole Advance

The Briny—Somewhere in the Atlantic

M & D (Medicine & Duty)—Victoria, 11th Canadian Field Ambulance

The Busy Beaver—Royal Canadian Engineers

The Listening Post—7th Canadian Infantry (1st British Columbia Regiment)

Prime Minister Robert Borden sent a letter to the Listening Post on its second anniversary in May 1917:

From time to time I have had the privilege and pleasure of reading this very interesting paper established and conducted under such novel and remarkable conditions, and I have been struck by the ability and wit displayed by the contributors. To the men at the front it must be a great source of interest and diversion; to those at home in Canada it is in itself a message telling of the splendid cheerfulness and indifference to hardship with which our gallant men are defending our institutions and our liberties.

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